This week's Chess Questions Answered video discusses the role of stamina in chess, late mistakes are often explained by sheer exhaustion. This certainly played a role in this week's Candidates tournament game between Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura, in which both players made mistakes late on in the game. Another case was the game between Wei Yi and Nakamura,
How do you avoid becoming exhausted? Certainly fitness plays a role, but also someone's general stress levels can be a factor. Ideally players should be well rested and relaxed throughout a game and tournament, but this is often easier said than done. Ideally there will be no external concerns when someone goes in for a tournament, such as waiting for your solicitor to call to let you know your house sale is going through. It's also good to reconcile concerns about your chess, for example by being well prepared, you should also make sure you're well hydrated!
There are tactics which are designed to exhaust opponents, for example by improving your position very slowly in an endgame and perhaps doing a twofold repetition. In matches against a single player, a policy of exhausting an opponent can bear fruit, especially if one of the players believes he has greater physical and emotion reserves. An example of this was the first match between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov in which the challenger, Kasparov, played to extend the match as long as possible, something that eventually started to bear fruit.
Certainly this is a big part of chess, so make sure you are ready and use your energy reserves wisely!
Training Tournaments
Here are the latest scheduled events:
Sunday April 5th, 5pm UK French Exchange
Sunday April 5th, 6.15pm UK Old Indian Tartakower
Video Discounts
This week's discount is 40% off buying Understanding Strategy and Planning, using the code 'april3to11'. This series presents a systematic way of approaching these areas by learning how to play different pawn structures and the plans and ideas they contain.
Last week's discount was 40% off buying my French Defence course using the code 'mar27apr4'. This is a stand alone opening course which builds on the treatment of the French presented in the Building an Opening Repertoire course. It features over 11 hours of video which explain key games and ideas plus a pgn (portable game notation) file of recommended variations.
Upcoming Events
This is how things look right now. I'm hoping to get invites to the British Championships (August), European Senior Team Championships (late August) and English Senior Championships (October), but there's nothing definite as yet.
April 3 - 6: 4NCL Easter Congress, Daventry
I should have finished the first round 4NCL Congresses by the time this goes out. This one is 7 rounds, and played over Easter weekend.
April 18 - 29: World Senior Team Championships, Durres, Albania
I've had confirmation that I'll be in the 50+ first team for this one.
Have a good weekend.
Nigel
